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WEDDINGS: VOWS; Elizabeth Vargas and Marc Cohn

THREE years ago, the night before the men's singles semifinals at the United States Open in Queens, Andre Agassi spent the evening carbo-loading in style. He had a private concert with his favorite singer, Marc Cohn, at a recording studio in the meatpacking district, filling the place with candles and ordering in pasta from Il Mulino.

Mr. Cohn, 43, writes songs so plaintive they seem like the sort of ballads you would listen to while contemplating signing divorce papers. ''Marc has a lot of blue-eyed soul,'' said Roseanne Cash, the singer.

The next day, Agassi won the match. Mr. Cohn, who had been in the stands, dropped by the locker room afterward, and right away noticed Elizabeth Vargas, a dark-haired, 39-year-old correspondent for ABC News. ''Agassi was scheduled to be on the 'Today' show and I was there to steal him away,'' she remembered.

While waiting, Ms. Vargas overheard Agassi's trainer say something to Mr. Cohn that she recalled stirred her curiosity: ''He said, 'What you did for Andre last night was wonderful! It put him in a great mood.' I'm thinking, 'What did he do?' ''

During the men's singles finals the following day, Ms. Vargas and Mr. Cohn, seated on opposite sides of the court, found themselves watching each other rather than the match. At one point, Mr. Cohn recalled, ''I held up my coat, basically saying, 'If you're cold, I'll bring you this.' ''

He phoned her a few days later. ''It was really, really scary,'' he said. ''I'd been divorced. I'm the father of two children. I just wasn't dating at all.''

Both say they fell in love at the dining room table of her Upper West Side apartment, where they dined and talked about politics, Proust, song lyrics and religion. ''We'd lived very different lives,'' he said. ''She'd been single for most of her adult life; I'd been married for most of mine. She read the op-ed page; I read the arts section.''

His children, Max, 11, and Emily, 7, soon joined them at the Vargas table, which overlooks the Hudson River. And it was there, alone with Ms. Vargas, that he proposed marriage last April.

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A few days later he took Max and Emily to Central Park and broke the news. ''After celebrating for two or three minutes, my daughter said, 'This isn't an April Fool's joke is it?' '' Mr. Cohn said. That night, they all had dinner at Nick & Toni's on the Upper West Side. ''My son, completely unprompted, got down on his knee in the restaurant and said, 'Elizabeth, will you be my stepmother?' ''

Ms. Vargas and Mr. Cohn were married on July 20 at the Council on Foreign Relations on the Upper East Side, where the wood-paneled rooms were filled with friends like Bryant Gumbel; Jackson Browne; Leonard Lauder; Matt Lauer and his wife and new mother, Annette Roque Lauer. (The spunky former model said, ''I went from being a home wrecker to being a homemaker.'')

Also present were Carly Simon, wearing sunglasses and a white slim-fitting dress, and her son, Ben Taylor, who was all baggy clothes and sweet irreverence. ''I've never made it through a wedding without laughing hysterically,'' he said as he sat down.

The Jewish-Catholic ceremony took place under a cantaloupe-colored canopy, with the bride in a strapless Vera Wang dress that had none of the poufs, tulle or ribbons that often make brides struggle like flies in a spider web.

After dinner, the guests gathered in a small library lighted with candles for a concert by the bridegroom. He sang his ballad ''One Safe Place,'' which he noted he had composed for Ms. Vargas -- before they met. ''It was about my wish to meet someone like her,'' he said.

With guests gathered close around him, as if around a campfire, he sang:

How many roads you've traveled

How many dreams you've chased

Across sand and sky and gravel

Looking for one safe place.

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A version of this article appears in print on July 28, 2002, on Page 9009009 of the National edition with the headline: WEDDINGS: VOWS; Elizabeth Vargas and Marc Cohn. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe